Front door.

Here's the "finished" product--concrete poured, ugly support 2x4s gone, proud homeowner standing impatiently so I can take the picture (which is B&W by accident). In the right background is the treehouse, and Maude is sitting in the doorway. Now Todd and Oupi have to go to the quarry to pick out stone to lay on top of the cement.

This is how at looked earlier. Chad (Tricia's (the babysitter) husband) helped to dig it out. Todd built forms and the cement was poured. You can see Chad using a ditch witch to divert the rain. We need to grade the ground a little more.

Here's Todd being very manly and cutting the support post.

Does it fit yet?
Our nearly finished TV room with little girl almost sitting by herself.
Maude watches the construction from the doorstep (in her new sunhat.)

The finished floor

I almost don't want to move furniture back in so that I can just look at it. This is the floor in the living room/tv area,

Looking from the laundry room through the kitchen to the dining room and door to the screened porch,

The view from the tv area to the front door (see the door has been framed and more tile has been laid. The top of the tile still needs to be capped and it gets grouted,)

the view from the front door as Todd was working on laying the tile.

This is in the TV room, the lid to the cistern (that wasn't yet covered with the ipe in the picture a few posts ago where Todd was laying the floor.)

Neatness in floor laying....

Okay, at the edges (close to the wall), you can't use the nail gun because there's not enough clearance to swing the hammer. So you either screw in the floorboards very close to the edge or do it through the board and cover the screwholes with plus. This is how Todd did it.

These pics loaded in the wrong order, but here is the finished product...
An unfinished plugged hole (with a spare plug lying beside it.)
Todd hammering in a plug. He first puts glue on the edges, then hammers it in.
Tools of the trade. Todd had saved the ends of boards from the pieces that needed plugs. He took them to the shop and used a drill press to drill these slightly tapered plugs. They get chiseled out, hammered in and then sawed flush to the floor.

The floor goes down...

Couldn't resist a picture of the six-month old cherub. This is her while her Dad pounds away with his nail gun.

A picture of the hearth that Todd finished (mostly) in the fall. He's still putting tile on the wall under the light switch to the left and tiling the mudroom to the front door (also on the left).
This shot shows how the tile and the ipe wood color go nicely together.
Todd pounds away. The square behind him is the cistern lid that now has wood on top of it. The lid will lift up with two recessed pulls that will the routed in to be flush. The door will be under a carpet and heavy so that no little people can pull it up and fall in.
Down the hall for the longest run of wood.
Todd finished laying all the ipe today. Tomorrow he has to fill little plugs where he screwed the wood in where it was too close to use the nail gun. He's also relaying the sycamore flooring in the small dressing room. Floor finishers will be here on Wednesday.

More updates

Here Todd is starting to lay the floor. Long pieces down the hall. The wood is ipe, it's hard and mostly used for decks. Grown (sustainably) in Brazil. The lengths are as long as 18 feet.
Before Todd could start laying the floor, he had to level at the join. The original house was two sections of the old modular, and it seems that leveling was not a big priority.
The wood for the floor has been in the house for a few weeks to dry.
Maudie and Dad in front of the Christmas tree--we had to get a more expensive tree this year so that it wouldn't look puny in our room with high ceilings.
This was in October when Todd did the surround and the wood stove. Thank goodness he got it installed in time for the weather because the winter has been brutal (but our electric bills have not!)Okay, I'm going to try to be a little more diligent about this. Maude is 6 months old, we got a roof over our head, slowly life is getting a little more normal.

Long silence ends...

We have to fast forward through six months...

Todd and Maude sitting in Miles' room--just finished in time for Oupi and Granny's arrival.The vanity Todd built in the hall bathroom. Cherry with sycamore inlays in the front.

Oh yes, I promised a last pregnant picture!The hall bathroom--with heated floor! Luxurious.

The walls go up (and what a difference!)

It feels like I haven't written for ages, so there's a lot to report (despite the fact that Todd is back at work making money, so only working on the house in his "free" time). The big progress was getting the sheetrock up.

Here's Todd on stilts refining his technique;

the finished product (this is the dining room on the left and TV alcove on the right);

the view down the hallway (the light from the skylights is really fabulous and opens the place up nicely);

the living room (on left), kitchen (on right). In the back left is the mudroom and the alcove where the wood stove will go.

One of my favorite parts of this remodel is that the house looks essentially the same from the outside, but when you walk in it is so much lighter and more open.

We're also focusing on getting the kids' (notice the plural) bathroom finished. Our big splurge is heated floors in the bathrooms, and if you look closely at the shot you can see the wires running for the heater. Dave is here today working on tile.

Otherwise I finally have something I could do (I primed the lower piece of Miles' room today), and there are about 10 days till Sprout is due to arrive. I can't wait to have her/him so that I can feel less useless! And hot! Todd is at the shop building the cabinet for the little bathroom, and we're shopping for plumbing fixtures and sink next week. Bart was at the house last week cleaning up outside which has made a huge difference. We've got a little over a month till Oupi and Granny arrive from South Africa, so hopefully Miles' room and the bathroom will be done by then. I think they should be. Famous last words!?